Press TV talks with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and lecturer in Washington who shares his in-depth insights of the movements by Western and Arab elements behind the scenes to destabilize Syria and terrorize its people. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: What is your reaction to our first speaker and to the US’ broader plan to, let’s put it this way, at a minimum create this unrest in the country?

Webster Tarpley: Let me confirm some things that the first speaker said. I was in Syria myself in the second half of November and I visited Homs and I went to the Zahra neighborhood and in particular the Zahra hospital and the main demand that was raised by ordinary people of all religions was that they don’t want the Syrian army taken out of there; they want the Syrian army to come in.

The main demand that I heard was that they want the Syrian army to post itself on the rooftops of houses and prevent terrorist snipers from killing people. And those snipers are killing everybody – they’re killing if you are pro-Assad, anti-Assad, taking your kid to school it doesn’t matter because they kill you and then al-Jazeera and the BBC and France24 arrive and say, uh huh, another victim of the Assad regime.

This is, regarding the US, this is the Salvadorian option. People may remember about six years ago now at the beginning of 2005 there was a discussion inside the Pentagon on how to start a civil war in Iraq and they decided they would use the death squads that they had used in Latin America and Argentina in Central America and so forth; that they could bring that to Iraq, but part of that plan was already Syria because they regarded Syria as a part of it.

Now, the specific timing of what just happened – the head of the so-called Free Syrian Army, this colonel who is undoubtedly a NATO agent of some kind, made an ultimatum on Wednesday. He said I’m giving the Syrian government four days and they have to stop shooting, they basically have to surrender or else I will carry out some spectacular action. Well… here is the spectacular action.

The other thing I would stress is that the head of the observers, the Sudanese general al-Dabi, he wanted to go to Eskandarun, Turkey because that seems to be the main NATO base from where this is all being organized.

There has been a NATO airlift from Libya with about 600 to 1500 Libyan fighters from the Libyan Islamic Fighting group, in other words al-Qaeda, led by the infamous butcher Belhadj with all kinds of weapons stolen from Gaddaffi’s arms depots; you’ve got French and British Special Forces officers; you’ve got the CIA; you’ve got the US Joint Special Operations Command running communications. I’m sure given all this the Israelis cannot be far behind.

That’s going on in Eskandarun and you notice the vast majority of violence is in these peripheral areas, it’s either the Lebanese, the Turkish, the Iraqi or the Jordanian border because it’s all being brought in from outside.

The real commander of these death squads, because that’s what they are – it’s a cross border invasion – there is no civil war in Syria; there is no uprising in Syria per se. There’s a cross border invasion of these death squads and terrorists.

Belhadj – this is the butcher of Baghdad, he was killing Shiites in Baghdad for the US to start that infamous civil war. He’s the butcher of Tripoli now, he was part of the NATO invasion. The former prime minister of Spain, Aznar, has pointed out that Belhadj is one of the prime movers of the Madrid 2004 train bombing – so he’s also the butcher of Madrid.

So, Belhadj and his gang they would now like to become the butchers of Damascus and I can’t see how anybody in Syria wants this – you’re going to get a NATO bombing and then you’re going to be put under a bunch of Libyan al-Qaeda terrorists led by Belhadj. Not a good future for Syria.

Press TV: In terms of support that Assad does have in the country, we’ve heard varying degrees, but it’s more than half at a minimum up to 70 percent support with some undecided and some opposition, which is natural.

Is the violence and unrest in that country and its reaction maybe to the advantage of the revolutions and uprisings in pro-US governments like Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain for example – countries that the West calls the alliance of moderation?

Webster Tarpley: The goal of US and British NATO foreign policy in 2011 was the destabilization of all Arab and all Middle East governments almost without exception – maybe some monarchies not immediately, but the rest of them. Entrenched satraps like Mubarak or Ben Ali were dumped because these people had become powerful enough to say ‘no’ on certain issues. For example the US wanted Egyptian bases, Egyptian troops for Iraq and he had said no, so eventually they decided that they would get rid of him.

The goal of course is the destruction of the national state, which is what we’re seeing – partition, war lords, chaos, terrorists like Belhadj taking over the division we see in Iraq and so forth.

I would just like to point out that the financing of this in particular with the example of Belhadj, if Belhadj is this guy who’s been taken from Libya, put on a NATO plane and flown to Eskandarun leaving behind, as was mentioned, a civil war in Libya with the Misrata brigade fighting the other brigades; and the army wants money; it’s total chaos.

That’s fine from the US and British point of view, but when you look at Syria, what’s coming at them is Belhadj and his right-hand man is called el-Harrathi, he’s is Eskandarun and then there’s a guy in the background called el-Salibi and Salibi’s job is he delivers the money. For example, the wrecking of Libya cost about two billion dollars specifically from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.

And I think you have to look at Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE as the people who are financing this. The direction is clearly NATO; the people on the ground are jihadists from Afghanistan from Iraq from all over, they’ve been brought in by NATO intelligence and the money is coming in from these reactionary monarchs.

Press TV: You have Saudi Arabia, you have Qatar that you mentioned and the United Arab Emirates that are helping. What is there to say that the US, ‘the Empire’ as our guest in London called them is not going to turn against them?

Webster Tarpley: There is no guarantee and eventually as the wheels turn every satrap becomes unbearable because every satrap becomes capable of saying no. So there is no security. I would warn the al-Thani family of Qatar. They think they’re sitting pretty; they won’t be for very long. If you sew the wind you will reap the whirlwind.